Botelho, JCA and Silva, RR. 2021. Presidential Powers in Latin America Beyond Constitutions. Iberoamericana – Nordic Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 50(1), pp. 28–39. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16993/iberoamericana.508

RESEARCH ARTICLE Presidential Powers in Latin America Beyond Constitutions João Carlos Amoroso Botelho and Renato Rodrigues Silva

If constitutional powers of Latin American presidents have been studied extensively, there have been fewer attempts of conceptualizing and measuring these powers in combination with partisan sources and informal practices which also may be used by presidents to exert influence in Latin America. The article advances from previous attempts that have focused on constitutional powers in order to develop indices able to capture variation in presidential powers between one president to another in a specific country and within the same presidency, even if constitutional powers remain the same. The results also show that the factor that leads to the concentration of powers by the executive in Latin America is partisan powers. This finding contradicts an influential understanding in the literature that presidencies with more constitutional powers are more problematic for sustaining democracy.

Keywords: Presidential Powers; Latin America; Constitutional Prerogatives; Partisan and Informal Sources; Power Concentration

Resumen: Si los poderes constitucionales de las/los presidentes latinoamericanos han sido estudiados extensivamente, hay menos intentos de conceptualizar y mensurar esos poderes en combinación con fuentes partidarias e informales que presidentes también pueden utilizar para ejercer influencia en Amé- rica Latina. El artículo avanza en relación a intentos anteriores que han enfocado poderes constitucionales y elabora índices capaces de capturar variación en los poderes presidenciales entre un presidente y otro en un país específico y en una misma presidencia, aunque los poderes constitucionales sean los mismos. Los resultados también muestran que el factor que lleva a la concentración de poderes por el ejecutivo en América Latina es los poderes partidistas. Ese hallazgo contradice una visión influyente en la literatura de que presidencias con más poderes constitucionales son más problemáticas para sostener la democracia.

Palabras clave: poderes presidenciales; América Latina; prerrogativas constitucionales; fuentes partidis- tas e informales; concentración de poderes

Introduction Despite the relationship identified by the authors The variation of powers among Latin American presidents between the constitutional and partisan powers, Shugart has been a topic of interest in the literature. For Shugart and and Mainwaring propose a typology of presidential pow- Mainwaring (2002), the capacity of presidents to influence ers in Latin America limited to constitutional guarantees law and policy formulation in Latin America depends on the of influence over the legislative process. If the constitu- relationship between their constitutional and partisan pow- tional powers of Latin American presidents have been ers. A president who does not have constitutional guaran- studied extensively (García Montero 2009; Mainwaring & tees of influence may still exert these if happens to be the Shugart 2002a; Negretto 2013; Payne et al. 2003), there leader of a party or a coalition with legislative majority. The have been fewer attempts of conceptualizing and meas- same happens to a president who does have these guaran- uring these powers in combination with the partisan tees and may be influential even if their party or coalition sources and informal practices which also may be used by does not hold a legislative majority or if the president does presidents to exert influence in Latin America. not control the majority obtained by their party or coalition. The article contributes both by advancing from previous indices that focus on constitutional powers and by show- ing that the factor that leads to the concentration of pow- Department of Political Science, Universidade Federal de Goiás, Goiânia, BR ers by the executive in Latin America is partisan powers. Corresponding author: João Carlos Amoroso Botelho The indices developed here are able to capture variation in ([email protected]) presidential powers between one president to another in Botelho and Silva: Presidential Powers in Latin America Beyond Constitutions 29 a specific country and within the same presidency, even if formulation in Latin America depends on the relationship constitutional powers remain the same. Indices restricted between their constitutional and partisan powers. However, to these powers, such as the ones proposed by Negretto this understanding was little operationalized, even by the (2013) for Latin America, would not be able to do the authors themselves. At the same time, informal practices same. that may grant or withdraw power from presidents also The results also show that the presidencies of Nicaragua, need to be considered for the Latin American countries, Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay, and Colombia were potentially as the literature has pointed out (Hartlyn 1998; Helmke & dominant. However, this potential led to a concentration Levitsky 2006; O’Donnell 1994, 1996; Siavelis 2006). of powers by the executive only in Nicaragua and Bolivia, Since Shugart and Carey (1992) proposed a way to meas- who possessed presidents with the most partisan powers ure presidential powers considering the legislative and among the 17 countries analyzed here. non-legislative capacities granted by the Constitution, The role of partisan powers contradicts Shugart and several authors have explored that and further sugges- Carey’s (1992) claim that presidencies with more consti- tions to offer alternative forms of measurement. Whether tutional powers are more problematic for the survival of they be for a greater number of cases (Doyle & Elgie 2016; democracy. It is also consistent with recent findings from Johannsen 2003) or specific regions, such as Latin America Pérez-Liñán, Schmidt, and Vairo (2019) on the effects that (Corrales 2013; Negretto 2013), parts of Europe (Hellman the concentration of power by the executive has on demo- 1996; Metcalf 2000), or countries from the former Soviet cratic instability in Latin America. The problems in this Union (Frye 1997), these options are also based on consti- sense identified by the literature do not refer to the presi- tutional prerogatives. dencies with the highest values for constitutional pow- Shugart and Carey (1992) measure presidential power ers in the indices developed here (from Chile and Brazil), by adding the scores given to a number of legislative but to three of the five (from Nicaragua, Bolivia, and and non-legislative powers. A limitation of their index, Venezuela) with the highest indices of partisan powers. according to Negretto (2013), is the understanding that The article is composed of five additional sections. The each legal prerogative evaluated contributes equally to a next item deepens the theoretical discussion and relates it president’s power. That means, for instance, that having to the arguments developed here. After that, the method- veto power would be the same as having decree power. ological procedures are explained. In the following three With the aggregation of the scores, they also do not take sections, the results and the conclusions of the analysis into account that the effects may be interactive. In other are presented and discussed. words, a specific combination of legal instruments may contribute to a president’s overall power (Cheibub 2007; Theoretical Discussion Negretto 2013). Presidential power is defined in the literature in terms There are studies (Carey & Shugart 1998; Negretto 2004) of the dimensions in which it can be exercised (Negretto that show, for instance, that agenda-setting and veto pow- 2013; Shugart & Carey 1992). There are also more specific ers have interactive effects. Thus, a president with moder- views (Biglaiser & DeRouen 2004; Hicken & Stoll 2008), ate agenda-setting and veto powers would have a larger that understand it as the degree to which power is concen- impact on the formulation of law and policies than one trated in the executive at the national level of government. with strong power in one of those categories and no power For Shugart and Carey, presidential power is expressed in in the other. An index estimated by aggregation could not constitutional terms, divided into two basic dimensions, capture these details, since the addition of the two scores one that refers to power over legislation and the other that at the mid-point of the scale would be equal to the sum of encompasses non-legislative powers, including authority a maximum and a minimum score. over the cabinet and calling early elections to congress. Fortin (2013) goes further and evaluates that presiden- Negretto (2013) expands the possibilities of exercising tial power indices have limited validity, for reasons such presidential power and understands it as a multidimen- as the impossibility of indicators in measuring the set of sional concept, encompassing the presidents’ authority in powers associated with the presidents or, on the other the exercise of their functions as party leader, head of state, hand, in generating separate measures of legislative and head of government, and legislator. To operationalize this non-legislative powers. Another problem would be the multidimensionality, however, the author follows the pro- assumption that equal scores mean the same effects for a posal of Shugart and Carey (1992) and restricts himself to causal analysis, which could not be the case since they are the constitutional limits. According to Negretto, the main the result of different combinations of power. dimensions of presidential power that are regulated by Despite agreeing with Fortin’s evaluation, Doyle and the constitution refer to, on the one hand, nominating Elgie (2016), who compile existing indices of presidential and removing ministers and authorities from the execu- powers and submit them to procedures to increase their tive and judiciary branches and, on the other, taking part reliability, consider that many concepts suffer from simi- and exerting influence on law and policy formulation. lar measurement and validity problems in social sciences. These dimensions are, respectively, governmental powers So the authors claim that it is better to use the informa- and legislative powers. tion offered by the indices and make them more reliable. Shugart and Mainwaring (2002) had already drawn For Doyle and Elgie, there are problems in measuring attention to the importance of the party dimension, claim- presidential powers based exclusively on constitutional ing that the presidents’ capacity to influence law and policy sources, because constitutions can be imperfect measures 30 Botelho and Silva: Presidential Powers in Latin America Beyond Constitutions of actual power. This does not mean, according to the Methodology authors, that there are no problems in considering other This article seeks to operationalize the measurement of sources and measuring behavioral powers, as Siaroff the different sources of presidential powers and to give (2003) does, because there is the risk of capturing the empirical and broad ground to previous indications from impact of factors such as party competition rather than theoretical or case studies that the formal aspects of insti- presidential power itself. tutional design are insufficient for assessing the powers Santos, Pérez-Liñán, and García Montero (2014) meas- of Latin American presidents. The intention is to create a ure the institutional capacity of Latin American presidents comprehensive index, not only by including factors such using an index elaborated by García Montero (2009). This as the president’s leadership over their party or coalition indicator goes beyond the constitutional guarantees of and informal practices, but also by accounting for the influence on law and policy formulation by including the variety of dimensions in which presidential powers are rules of the legislative process, with the goal of measuring exercised. The indices are built through aggregation and the chief executive’s role in every stage of this process. On include interactive effects. the other hand, factors such as the president’s leadership The dimensions of analysis refer to the functions of a over their party or coalition and informal mechanisms of president as party leader, head of state, head of govern- influence are not considered. Negretto (2013) includes the ment, and legislator, based on constitutional prerogatives, exercise of government and elaborates an index for gov- capacity for leadership, and informal practices that may ernmental powers and another for legislative powers, with be associated with the exercise of each function. These Latin America as reference. If his proposal goes beyond the dimensions, proposed by Negretto (2013),1 are used legislative dimension, it still follows the pattern of being because they cover a wide range of presidential tasks. restricted to the constitutional prerogatives of presidents. Given that the roles of head of state and head of govern- The issue about the insufficiency of constitutions as ment are combined in presidentialism, they are joined in sources for measuring presidential powers is especially one dimension. For each dimension, a series of variables relevant in the context of Latin America, where there is was defined, as Table 1 shows. a gap between what the legal framework establishes and In total, there are 47 variables, distributed over the its realization, as emphasized by O’Donnell (1996). This dimensions of party leader, head of state and government, has led to a scenario in which informal rules may be more and legislator. For the last two dimensions, variables used rooted than formal ones. by authors such as Shugart and Carey (1992) and Negretto Helmke and Levitsky (2006) define informal institu- (2013) were improved and complemented with oth- tions as socially shared rules, generally unwritten, that are ers that refer to informal practices. The variables for the created, transmitted, and reinforced outside of officially party leader dimension are in the most part those used by sanctioned channels. For the authors, despite the fact Mainwaring and Shugart (2002b). In order to take account that the literature about presidentialism in Latin America of informal practices, some variables were adapted, as well was initially focused on the formal aspects of the institu- as others were added. tional design, later works suggest that presidential system A Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) was applied dynamics cannot be fully understood with a strictly con- to test the results and identify the most important vari- stitutional framework. ables. MCA is a statistical technique that reduces the The effects of informal practices on presidential pow- dimensionality of a set of variables, by looking for a pat- ers can be to either reinforce or limit them. In the for- tern and proximity between observations and by deter- mer sense, O’Donnell (1994, 1996) theoretically exposes mining which variables are most important. how patrimonial practices enable a degree of execu- To consider informal practices, at least one variable tive predominance that exceeds what is constitutionally that is able to capture them was included in each dimen- prescribed and undermines horizontal accountability. sion of analysis. The selection of these variables does not His assumption has been tested by case studies, such as intend to be exhaustive. The intention was to select vari- Hartlyn (1998), who shows how patrimonialism in the ables that could be measured and repeated throughout Dominican Republic can reinforce, and be reinforced by, the cases. As an additional procedure, some variables the concentration of power in the executive. used in the literature on executive-legislative relations At the same time, informal institutions may limit presi- have been operationalized in a way that could capture dential power, even in cases of constitutions that make informal practices. room for an exaggerated presidentialism. By studying The main example is the way adopted to count the coa- the Chilean case, Siavelis (2006) shows how informal litions. The government coalition, formalized by a joint institutions have contributed to distribute power within candidacy in presidential elections, a written agreement the government coalition and to social groups, limit the among parties or, the most commonly used criterion, amount of power used by presidents and consolidate positions in the president’s cabinet, was not considered. democracy. In an attempt to theoretically model the rela- The concept used was of a legislative coalition, considered tionship between formal and informal presidential pow- as one that encompasses the parties that systematically ers in Latin America and the United States, Morgenstern, vote in line with the interests of the current government. Polga-Hecimovich, and Shair-Rosenfield (2013) state that In this case, there is no need for formalization through a the informal ones are more valuable to formally weaker joint candidacy in the previous elections, a written agree- presidents. ment or cabinet positions. Botelho and Silva: Presidential Powers in Latin America Beyond Constitutions 31

Table 1: Variables of Presidential Powers by Dimension.

Party leader Head of state and government Legislator Leadership over their party Appointment of executive at subnational Threshold to override presidential veto of level a bill Legislative majority of their party Appointment of judges to constitutional court Number of chambers that review a veto Cohesion of the ruling party Appointment of the attorney general Threshold to override partial veto of a bill Discipline of the ruling party Appointment of the controller general Partial promulgation of a bill Leadership over their legislative Legislative authority to interpellate ministers Presidential veto of budget bill coalition Legislative majority of their coalition Legislative authority to censure ministers Call for a period of extraordinary sessions Number of parties in the legislative Restriction to censure by dissolution of Exclusive initiative on economic legisla- coalition legislative tion Cohesion of the legislative coalition Threshold to initiate censure of ministers Submission of bills under urgency Discipline of the legislative coalition Threshold to approve censure of ministers Decree power in emergency situations Leadership over unions and social Number of chambers that review a censure Restriction on the content of decrees movements Number of institutions that review an Result of decree process impeachment Threshold to initiate an impeachment Submission of laws to popular referendum process Threshold to approve an impeachment Call for a Constitutional Assembly Impeachment option for political reasons Authority of legislative to increase spending Option for removal due to mental/physical Type of budget bill proceedings incapacity Legislative ratification for emergency decla- Relationship with the lower chamber’s ration presidency Limitation to suspension of rights under emergency Temporal limitation of emergency period State ownership of mass media Country’s dependence on foreign loans Subordination of the military to civilian power Source: Authors’ elaboration.

This procedure is able to take into account patrimonial adopted to achieve discipline in the president’s party or and other informal practices that aggregate parties to the coalition.2 The operationalization of the variables about president’s support base, such as the ones Mejía Acosta the number of parties and the discipline of the president’s (2006) describes for the Ecuadorean case. According to coalition applies theoretical contributions (O’Donnell 1994, him, some parties voted with the government in exchange 1996; Morgenstern, Polga-Hecimovich, & Shair-Rosenfield for benefits and did not publicly admit to integrate the 2013) that highlight patrimonial and alternative ways that coalition in power. In fact, they systematically denied can reinforce formal presidential powers in Latin America. doing so, to avoid the political fallout of associating There are also variables in the dimensions of head of themselves with badly evaluated presidents and to be less state and government and legislator that contribute exposed to criticism for negotiating their support, which towards the president having more or less power accord- the author defines as ‘ghost coalitions’. ing to the circumstances and that are not necessarily The discipline of the president’s party or coalition offers associated with formal aspects. Those are the cases of the another example. These variables have three categories, relationship with the presidency of the lower chamber, in which are undisciplined, disciplined through individual the legislator dimension; the state ownership of media negotiations, and disciplined through institutional nego- companies, the country’s dependency on foreign loans, tiations. With these categories, it is possible to take into and the subordination of the military to civilian power, account both the level of discipline observed in the legisla- in the head of state and government dimension. The last tive votes of interest to the government and the practices three variables were included because of the relevance 32 Botelho and Silva: Presidential Powers in Latin America Beyond Constitutions that armed forces, international financial institutions, and equal weight to all variables is the same procedure used by private media have shown historically in Latin America Shugart and Carey (1992), who have become an important by limiting or questioning the presidents’ power through reference till today for measuring presidential powers. means that are not necessarily foreseen and controlled by For the legislator dimension, two weighted indices were formal rules. constructed. The first was calculated by aggregating the The four variables encompass aspects such as the effects codes for each country and dividing the result by the total of having or not an ally in the lower chamber’s presidency; of variables, as with the other two dimensions. The second the possibility of the president to display their accomplish- index was based on the interaction suggested by Negretto ments and offer an alternative narrative to the one in the (2013) and achieved by multiplying the sums of the veto private media; the ability to reject demands in exchange and agenda-setting powers. Table 8 shows the results. for loans and to show control over economic policy; and Brazil has the highest index of presidential powers in the the control over the military, whether to discourage them head of state and government dimension and the fourth from rebelling or to judge them for violations during a highest in the legislator dimension, while Chile leads the previous authoritarian regime. latter and presents the third highest index for head of state The variables for the party leader dimension were coded and government. Considering jointly the two dimensions, taking into account the presidents who occupied office in which there is a predominance of powers of constitu- at the time of the evaluation, between May and June tional origin, Chile and Brazil exhibit the highest results 2017. They were the following: Mauricio Macri (2015– and are the only countries with values above 0.60. 2019) in Argentina; Evo Morales (2006–2019) in Bolivia; The index for Brazil in the party leader dimension, the Michel Temer (2016–2018) in Brazil; Michelle Bachelet second-lowest, helps explain why Dilma Rousseff (2011– (2014–2018) in Chile; Juan Manuel Santos (2010–2018) in 2016) had her second term interrupted in 2016 due to an Colombia; Luis Guillermo Solís (2014–2018) in Costa Rica; impeachment process. Although the index refers to the Lenín Moreno (2017–2021) in Ecuador; Salvador Sánchez presidency of Michel Temer, who was Rousseff’s vice-pres- Cerén (2014–2019) in El Salvador; Jimmy Morales (2016– ident and took over to finish her term, the explanation 2020) in Guatemala; Juan Orlando Hernández (2014– ) is pertinent given that the removed president had expe- in Honduras; Enrique Peña Nieto (2012–2018) in México; rienced more troubles than Temer with her legislative Daniel Ortega (2007– ) in Nicaragua; Juan Carlos Varela coalition. (2014–2019) in Panama; Horacio Cartes (2013–2018) in The result for Temer does not mean that his legislative Paraguay; Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (2016–2018) in Peru; coalition was not majoritarian, but quite the opposite, Tabaré Vázquez (2015–2020) in Uruguay; and Nicolás considering that it reached a qualified majority. Yet this Maduro (2013– ) in Venezuela. relative strength was diluted in the set of variables for the The coding of the variables concerning their party and party leader dimension because it was a coalition of many coalition blocs considers the number of elected represent- parties, electorally and ideologically fractioned, and disci- atives for each party that, at the time of the evaluation, plined through individual negotiations. was governing or taking part of the legislative coalition in In the extreme opposite of the head of state and govern- the lower chamber. The same timeframe was used to code ment dimension, with the lowest index, is El Salvador, a the four variables of the head of state and government and little behind Colombia and Venezuela, which present the legislator dimensions that do not refer to constitutional same value. In the legislator dimension, Costa Rica has the powers. In total, 14 variables of the three dimensions used smallest index, with Guatemala and Honduras, which have in the indices were coded by taking into account the situ- the same result, being the closest, all three with approxi- ation in mid-2017. mately 0.10. Considering both dimensions in a combined The coding of the other 33 variables is based on consti- way, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and tutions and auxiliary legislation. The complete procedure Venezuela present the lowest values. can be replicated anytime using the categories of the vari- On the other hand, the executive held a concentration ables and the explanations for the coding. The variables of powers during Hugo Chávez’s period as Venezuelan are placed in an ordinal scale ranging from the category president, from 1999 to 2013. Again, the partisan pow- with the lowest degree of presidential power to the cat- ers explain this, since they allowed Chávez to have a dis- egory with the highest degree in each variable. Tables 2 to ciplined single-party majority and exert influence over 7 of the appendix show: a) the categories and codes used accountability institutions through appointments made for each power in the party leader, head of state and gov- by that legislative majority. The index for Venezuela in the ernment, and legislator dimensions; b) the coding of these party leader dimension refers to the presidency of Chávez’s variables for the 17 countries analyzed; and c) the sources successor, Maduro, who did not have a legislative major- used to code the variables of each dimension. ity at the time of coding, but his index in that dimension stayed well above the ones in the other two dimensions, Results 0.583 against 0.254 for head of state and government and To elaborate the indices through aggregation, the varia- 0.406 for legislator. In addition, Maduro took advantage bles were weighted so as to have equal weights. Although of previous appointments to accountability institutions they still may have different effects on a Latin American for revoking powers of the Venezuelan legislature. president’s power, it is not possible to quantify that dif- The partisan powers are also what explain the concentra- ference nor consider that it is the same in all cases. Giving tion of powers in the executive identified by the literature Botelho and Silva: Presidential Powers in Latin America Beyond Constitutions 33

Table 8: Indices of Presidential Powers by Dimension and Overall.

Country Party Head of state Legislator Legislator* Overall leader and government Argentina 0.350 0.429 0.615 1.281 0.465 Bolivia 0.767 0.401 0.333 0.146 0.500 Brazil 0.283 0.627 0.583 1.177 0.498 Chile 0.400 0.504 0.740 1.625 0.548 Colombia 0.467 0.254 0.573 1.031 0.431 Costa Rica 0.367 0.270 0.167 0.104 0.268 El Salvador 0.483 0.246 0.271 0.292 0.333 Ecuador 0.600 0.274 0.635 1.146 0.503 Guatemala 0.100 0.341 0.187 0.125 0.209 Honduras 0.433 0.437 0.187 0.125 0.352 Mexico 0.400 0.540 0.302 0.312 0.414 Nicaragua 0.850 0.456 0.281 0.219 0.529 Panama 0.333 0.397 0.542 0.948 0.424 Paraguay 0.300 0.357 0.385 0.479 0.347 Peru 0.400 0.313 0.531 0.812 0.415 Uruguay 0.600 0.357 0.531 0.906 0.496 Venezuela 0.583 0.254 0.406 0.406 0.414 * With an interaction between veto and agenda-setting powers. Source: Authors’ elaboration. in Bolivia and Nicaragua (Anria 2016; Mainwaring & Pérez- and Bolivia, it is due to the powers as party leader. Ecuador Liñán 2015) during the Morales and Ortega presidencies. and Uruguay are intermediary cases, since their presidents Nicaragua and Bolivia present low or medium values in had more powers in the legislator and party leader dimen- the head of state and government and legislator dimen- sions, thus combining sources both constitutional and sions, respectively 0.369 and 0.367 for the two dimensions partisan. In the extreme opposite, Guatemala and Costa combined, against 0.622 and 0.605 of Chile and Brazil. Rica had the weakest presidents, the only ones with an When it comes to partisan powers, however, Nicaragua overall index of 0.20, approximately. and Bolivia have the highest indices, respectively 0.850 Chile and Brazil show that having a president with and 0.767, which are also the highest values for the four more constitutional powers does not mean as a result a indices calculated that do not include an interaction concentration of powers by the executive, since the factor between variables. The interactive version of the index for that led to this result in Nicaragua and Bolivia is partisan the legislator dimension creates some results superior to powers. The role of these powers contradicts the claim one, because of the multiplication between the sums of of Shugart and Carey (1992) that presidencies with more the veto and agenda-setting powers. constitutional powers are more problematic for sustain- The inclusion of that interaction, suggested by Negretto ing democracy. (2013), slightly alters the picture in the legislator dimen- The problems of regime instability identified by the sion. Chile and Costa Rica still have, respectively, the highest literature in Latin America (Anria 2016; Mainwaring & and smallest indices. There is a change in the countries that Pérez-Liñán 2015) do not refer to the presidencies from present the second and third highest values, with Argentina Chile and Brazil with the highest indices of constitutional and Brazil moving in front of Ecuador. That limited effect powers, but to three of the five (from Nicaragua, Bolivia, of the interaction between veto and agenda-setting pow- and Venezuela) with the highest indices of partisan pow- ers for the result of the legislator dimension reinforces the ers. The role of these powers is also consistent with recent validity of the aggregation method used here. findings of Pérez-Liñán, Schmidt, and Vairo (2019) con- For the set of all three dimensions, Chile, Nicaragua, cerning the effects that the concentration of power by the Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil, and Uruguay had the most power- executive has on democratic instability in Latin America, ful presidents. In the cases of Chile and Brazil, this is due since two of the four variables used by the authors are to the powers as head of state and government and legis- related to partisan powers. lator, the dimensions in which there is a predominance of The presidencies coded here are presented in Graph 1 powers of constitutional origin. In the cases of Nicaragua according to the powers of presidents as party leader and, 34 Botelho and Silva: Presidential Powers in Latin America Beyond Constitutions

Graph 1: Distribution of Countries According to Presidential Powers. Source: Authors’ elaboration. in combination, as head of state and government and leg- acquired for the survival of presidents in Latin America. islator. That definition of the axes for the graph is based On the other hand, a single-party majority leads to power on Shugart and Mainwaring (2002), for whom the capac- concentration in the executive, since Nicaragua and ity of a president in Latin America to influence law and Bolivia were the only cases of qualified majority for the policy formulation depends on the relationship between president’s party. their constitutional powers, which are concentrated in the Using the classification categories proposed by Shugart head of state and government and legislator dimensions, and Mainwaring (2002) and adding other types of power, and partisan powers. since the authors limit themselves to the legislative author- In the superior right quadrant, with indices higher ity of Latin American presidents, it is possible to find than half of the scale on both axes, are Nicaragua, Bolivia, that Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay, and Colombia Ecuador, Uruguay, and Colombia. In the inferior right had potentially dominant presidencies; Chile, Brazil, quadrant, with values higher than half in the axis of the Argentina, Peru, Mexico, Panama, and Paraguay, proactive; dimensions in which there is a predominance of powers Venezuela and El Salvador, reactive; and Honduras, Costa of constitutional origin, is the largest group of cases com- Rica, and Guatemala, potentially marginal. Table 9 pre- posed by Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Mexico, Panama, sents the characteristics of each group of presidencies. and Paraguay. On the left side of the graph, Venezuela These classifications do not mean, for instance, that all and El Salvador are in the superior quadrant, with indi- presidencies defined as potentially dominant materialize ces larger than half of the partisan powers axis, while this potential and that all classified as potentially marginal Honduras, Costa Rica, and Guatemala are in the inferior are in fact marginalized. Considering the five presidencies quadrant, with values smaller than the half of both axes. classified as potentially dominant, this has only led to a A MCA was conducted to test the results and identify concentration of powers by the executive in Nicaragua the most important variables. The top two dimensions and Bolivia, whose presidents obtained the greatest scores of the MCA explain 24.03% of the results. If we interpret of partisan powers among the 17 countries analyzed here. dimensions 1 and 2 as, respectively, party leader and head of state and government, Nicaragua and Bolivia, in the Variation between presidencies and over time first one, and Brazil, in the second, are in the same posi- In order to show the utility of the indices of presidential tions as in the indices of these dimensions, with scores powers, two countries were chosen: one where there was much higher than those of other countries. a change of president since the first coding was done in Graph 2 displays the squared loading estimated for each 2017; and one where the presidential term lasted from variable in the top two dimensions of the MCA. This statis- 2017 to 2021. The first is Brazil, where Temer was substi- tic estimates the contribution of each variable. Legislative tuted in 2019 by Jair Bolsonaro, elected in 2018 for a four- majority of the president’s party, threshold to approve an year term. The second is Ecuador, where Moreno was in the impeachment, appointment of the controller general, and final year of his term in 2021. With these cases, it is possible impeachment option for political reasons are the most to show variation between one president to another in a important variables. These findings show the great power specific country and over time within the same presidency. that a single-party majority may offer to a president and Bolsonaro was elected by a small party, which increased the increasing importance that impeachment rules have from one deputy elected in 2014 to 52 in 2018 and Botelho and Silva: Presidential Powers in Latin America Beyond Constitutions 35

Graph 2: Squared loadings of the variables. Source: Authors’ elaboration.

Table 9: Classification of Presidencies According to its Combinations of Powers.

Classification Powers in Common Countries Potentially dominant Single-party with qualified or absolute majority and veto subject to over- Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador, ride by a qualified or absolute majority and Uruguay Majority coalition of three to five parties, decree subject to legislative Colombia authorization, and veto subject to override by an absolute majority Proactive Majority coalition of six or more parties, unilateral decree or subject to Chile and Brazil legislative authorization, veto subject to override by a qualified or abso- lute majority, and appointment of attorney-general subject to ratification by a qualified or absolute majority Unilateral decree or subject to legislative authorization and veto subject Argentina, Peru, and Panama to override by a qualified or absolute majority Majority coalition of three to five parties or undisciplined single-party Mexico and Paraguay majority, veto subject to override by a qualified or absolute majority, and ministers are not subject to censure or dismissal for censure Reactive Disciplined minority and in condition of second force in number of seats Venezuela and El Salvador Potentially marginal Minority party or coalition and veto subject to override by a qualified Honduras, Costa Rica, and majority Guatemala Source: Authors’ elaboration. became the second-largest force in the Brazilian cham- government coalition and giving ministries and power to ber of deputies. Even so, Bolsonaro has never presided allied parties. over the party and left it in his first year as Brazilian presi- On the other hand, his predecessor, Temer, had pre- dent to become an independent politician since then. sided over his party before becoming president and Moreover, he is not sympathetic about formalizing a took charge of formalizing a government coalition and 36 Botelho and Silva: Presidential Powers in Latin America Beyond Constitutions

Graph 3: Presidential Powers in Brazil (2017–2021). Source: Authors’ elaboration.

Graph 4: Presidential Powers in Ecuador (2017–2021). Source: Authors’ elaboration. securing enough legislative support for being able to sur- For Ecuador, there is even more variation over time vive two attempts of prosecuting him. Since Bolsonaro has within the same presidency. Moreno was in the first and the same constitutional powers as Temer had, an index the last year of his term as Ecuadorian president between restricted to this source of presidential powers would not the coding of his powers in 2017 and the repetition of be able to capture variations between one president to this procedure in 2021. He was elected by a party that another and to guide an evaluation of consequences. achieved a majority of seats in the national assembly, As Graph 3 shows, there is no variation in the amount the only legislative chamber in Ecuador. He also presided of power as head of state and government and legislator over this party. In 2021, at the end of his term, Moreno between Temer and Bolsonaro, but the current president was being challenged in the party and decided to leave lost power in the party leader dimension in comparison it, which by itself did not hold a majority of seats in the to his predecessor, due to factors such as lack of experi- national assembly anymore. ence as party leader and internal struggles among political As Graph 4 shows, Moreno had the same powers as legis- and sectorial factions of his government. Considering this, lator between one year to another and slightly more powers Bolsonaro is more dependent on the legislative to organ- as head of state and government due to an informal source, ize his support base, especially the presidency of both which is the fact that there was no security forces uprising chamber of the congress, and vulnerable to an impeach- in the last ten years, but he did experience an important ment process. loss of powers as party leader. Considering this, Moreno had Botelho and Silva: Presidential Powers in Latin America Beyond Constitutions 37 been facing legislative setbacks and formal proceedings party or coalition is disciplined, there is no systema- against some cabinet ministers in his final days as president. tized data on party discipline for legislative votes of all the countries analyzed here. The same interpretive Conclusions procedure was adopted to code the variable on the This article contributes both by advancing from previous cohesion of the president’s party or coalition. indices that are limited to constitutional powers and by showing that the factor which leads to the concentration Additional File of powers by the executive in Latin America is partisan The additional file for this article can be found as follows: powers. With comparisons between presidents of Brazil in 2017 and 2021 and between these years of the same presi- • Appendix. Table 2 to 7. DOI: https://doi. dency in Ecuador, the indices developed here show that org/10.16993/iberoamericana.508.s1 they are able to capture variation in presidential powers even if constitutional powers remain the same from one Competing Interests moment to another. Indices restricted to constitutional The authors have no competing interests to declare. powers, such as those of Negretto (2013), would not be able to capture this kind of variation and guide an evalua- Author Contributions tion of the consequences, as the indices proposed here do. João Carlos Amoroso Botelho led the work, and Renato The presidencies classified as potentially dominant in Rodrigues Silva contributed to the methodological and terms of overall powers are from Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador, analytical sections. Uruguay, and Colombia. However, this potential led to a concentration of powers by the executive only in Nicaragua Author Informations and Bolivia, whose indices of partisan powers were the João Carlos Amoroso Botelho: He is an associate professor highest ones among the 17 countries analyzed here. This of Political Science at the Universidade Federal de Goiás shows the relevance of partisan powers in explaining the (Federal University of Goiás, UFG), Brazil, and earned a concentration of powers by the executive in Latin America. Ph.D. in Political Science from the Universidad de Sala- Chile and Brazil also illustrate that having a president manca (University of Salamanca, USAL), Spain. He is a with more constitutional powers does not mean as a result member of the research group Democratización de Amé- a concentration of powers by the executive and demo- rica Latina en Perspectiva Comparada (Democratization of cratic instability. The problems in sustaining democracy Latin America in Comparative Perspective, DALC), from identified by the literature in Latin America (Anria 2016; the Asociación Latinoamericana de Ciencia Política (Latin Mainwaring & Pérez-Liñán 2015) do not refer to the presi- American Association of Political Science, ALACIP). His dencies with the highest indices of constitutional powers, research areas are political institutions and regimes, com- which are from Chile and Brazil, but to three of the five parative politics, and regional integration. List of recent (from Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Venezuela) with the highest publications: indices of partisan powers. The role of these powers contradicts Shugart and Carey’s Botelho, JCA. 2018. Da perda de legitimidade à (1992) claim that presidencies with more constitutional polarização: Os partidos e os sistemas partidários powers are more problematic for sustaining democracy. It de Argentina e Venezuela. Caderno CRH, 31(83): is also consistent with recent findings from Pérez-Liñán, 407–426. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1590/S0103- Schmidt, and Vairo (2019) concerning the effects that the 49792018000200015 concentration of powers by the executive has on demo- Botelho, JCA, Okado, LTA and Bonifácio, R. 2020. cratic instability in Latin America. Overall, the article’s O declínio da democracia na América Latina: diag- results give an empirical and broad ground to indications nóstico e fatores explicativos. Revista de Estudios from theoretical or case studies (Hartlyn 1998; O’Donnell Sociales, 74: 41–57. DOI: https://doi.org./10.7440/ 1994, 1996; Siavelis 2006) that the formal aspects of insti- res74.2020.04 tutional design are insufficient for evaluating presidential Botelho, JCA and Alves, VS. 2017. The weight of powers in Latin America. ideology on the attitude of Latin American coun- tries toward the United States. Revista Brasileira de Notes Política Internacional, 60(1): 1–14. DOI: https:// 1 The author does not operationalize the dimensions doi.org/10.1590/0034-7329201600112 and restricts himself to legislative and governmental powers conferred to Latin American presidents by dif- Renato Rodrigues Silva: He is an associate professor of ferent constitutions throughout the history of each Statistics at the Universidade Federal de Goiás and earned country. His unit of analysis, then, is the constitutions. a Ph.D. in Genetics from the Universidade de São Paulo 2 Due to the categories that were defined for the vari- (University of São Paulo, USP), Brazil. His research areas able, the coding was based on information gathered are statistical modeling and genetics. List of recent pub- from political news coverage. Although it would be lications: desirable to do it based on the proportion of votes that followed the government’s orientation, establishing Chung, YS, Silva, RR, Park, M and Lee, S. 2019. a threshold from which it could be determined if the Radiation-Induced breeding in Camelina Sativa. 38 Botelho and Silva: Presidential Powers in Latin America Beyond Constitutions

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How to cite this article: Botelho, JCA and Silva, RR. 2021. Presidential Powers in Latin America Beyond Constitutions. Iberoamericana – Nordic Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 50(1), pp. 28–39. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16993/ iberoamericana.508

Submitted: 16 July 2020 Accepted: 09 June 2021 Published: 08 July 2021

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